"Your account has been restricted". AKA "LinkedIn Jail".
This is what it says when I try to log into my account.
No explanation, no warnings, no specifics.
The restriction would be removed if they decide to (really?) and can confirm my identity by uploading a photo of an ID-card, passport or driver's license card. After a few days of wondering what happened, I actually tried to upload a photo copy of an ID, with my personal number, birth date etc. struck away with a marker.
Then, it dawned on me that all I had to do to deserve this was to make the linkedin AI-god (AI as artificial Intelligence? Or rather All-pervasive Anti-human) angry, by stating something "they" don't approve of. It could be anything from saying "there is a cure for cancer" to "COVID scam" to telling someone to just do what they like and ignore the "norms".
Note that with any upload of any formal document, you need to make sure that personal details are removed, for your own integrity. LinkedIn is infamous for security breaches, and even without breaches all top agencies have back doors and can use your data without your consent.
Allegedly, if I "agree to follow the User Agreement", I will get to see my account back.
But it doesn't say anywhere what might make the "master" angry again.
It could be anything that negates the "official narrative" or anything that contradicts common knowledge. OR in essence - it could mean anything that is "forbidden" to say.
Of course, my premium subscription will have to go bye-bye - no more 249 SEK/month for that. Happy to remove that monthly payment, which entitles the user to look into insights around who has looked in my profile and in what searches I was found.
Granted. Looking for a job is easier when having an account in a professional network site. But the time I have spent looking for interesting insights, and finding mainly commercial for already big corporations and some junk "news" referring to the Ukraine "theater", is time not so well spent, and people don't seem to respect their linkedin messages too much.
The job search engine is a rather good one, and I guess some companies use their linkedin account extensively to reach potential candidates.
But in that case, job search will have to go via other channels, and the resource and time hog that social networking implies. It is not just looking for jobs, but also looking around and "networking" and mingling with others, hopefully human, hopefully with other like-minded or at least with broad minded folks.
But I guess broad-mindedness is out of flavor and most articles are of the pro-pagan-da flavor which is, quite frankly, just boring.
So for now, I will either promise to shut my ever loving brain, until the point I don't need anything from any social network site, or if silence is not enough, then I'll just skip it. And probably never look back.
Update will follow.
Update (28.4.2022):
After 14 days, the two weeks infamous time limit, the "team" would decide whether to close me permanently or whatever.
Still after 20, the "team" still hasn't done that. So I wrote to them, give me my profile back.
The LinkedIn team, seemingly consisting of one person who always answers (or all are named Alessandro?) and never manages to keep track of all the people with "compliance issues"
So I wrote AI demigod Alessandro: You know what? close my account, not interested anymore.
So I got the answer: thanks for your patience, but due to the seriousness of your behavior, "we" still haven't been able to decide what to do with you.
Keep "thinking".
Update (31.5.2022):
The self-proclaimed demigods have finally decided (well, thank you) to let me use my account again.
After learning from my mistake - speaking freely in linkedin - I will use this platform only for putting a link to my own website, where I can write whatever I please, still to date. At least until privacy barriers fall outside the social media platforms, too. And if that happens, then we are really swimming up an excrement creek.
My “premium” subscription has been tossed away, and will never come back either, and all I need is the little casual look into the news stream and jobs search, as long as it’s not full with the usual junk.
Whenever anything happens again, I can toss off the whole thing. An independent thinker, right? Yes, indeed.
And you - please do that too.
Roam on the side of freedom.
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